


Fading In Reverse

by chiralchaos



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Abstract, Blood and Injury, Gen, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27717655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiralchaos/pseuds/chiralchaos
Summary: In which Tseng wakes up and learns that he survived that which Aerith did not.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough & Tseng
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	Fading In Reverse

_“You’re wrong. The Promised Land isn’t like what you imagined. And, I’m not going to help. Either way, there was no way Shinra could have won.”_

_“Pretty harsh. Sounds like something … you’d say …”_

~~~

It’s the light that stirs him first, slowly but surely intruding from the other side of his eyelids. His chest is heavy and there’s fire in his throat with every inhalation, and there’s not much to hear but the steady beeping of a nearby machine.

Tseng wakes up in a hospital bed, and everything is wrong.

“Boss?”

He knows that voice, but it is long, painful seconds before his brain catches up. Rude. His mouth forms the name but his voice doesn’t cooperate, which is mildly distressing. His neck is stiff, but he can see well enough out of the corner of his eyes. His fellow Turk is sat to attention in a chair next to his bed, and his presence is comforting in the sluggish haze of confusion Tseng is trying to unpick. Nothing comes rushing back as he would have hoped, but instead blurry snapshots start to piece together into a bigger picture. He remembers stone walls with coloured murals, and he remembers the sound of a legendary sword slicing through the air the split second before it landed. He had invited Elena out for dinner. He had bled to death. Or not, apparently.

“Tell me … what’s happening,” he croaks out, voice barely recognisable. Rude raises an eyebrow, leans back in his chair, straightens the cuff of his sleeve. He doesn’t normally fidget, and something is wrong.

“Depends what you remember, chief,” he says gruffly, “But don’t worry about that. We’re all ok. How are you -”

“We were after Sephiroth …” Tseng says, not caring for the other man’s concern, eyes drifting back to the ceiling. It’s all a blur. “The Promised Land. He … he said …”

Spirit energy. Becoming one with the Planet. His thoughts are a mess and he can’t piece it all together. His head is pounding.

“Yeah, that …” Rude starts. He pushes his shades up. “That ain’t going so well.”

“AVALANCHE …” Tseng croaks. Rude cracks his neck.

“That ain’t going so well either. Rufus got hold of two of ‘em, Tifa and the guy with the gun arm, but they got away real quick. They got some old pilot with them now too, and some ninja girl. And as for the SOLDIER, he -”

“What about _her_?” Tseng turns his head on the pillow to look directly at Rude. He doesn’t care about AVALANCHE, he doesn’t care about pilots and ninjas and god damn SOLDIERs. “What about Aerith?”

There is a long moment where all he feels is his own breathing, raw against his damaged throat, and all he hears is the quickening bleep of a heart monitor. The silence stretches out between them and Tseng wants to reach out, shake the other man, but the mere thought of movement brings a new pain to his disused body. After a time Rude sighs deeply and leans forward, elbows heavy on his knees.

He takes off his shades, and Tseng looks him in the eyes as he tells him everything they know.

He has woken up in a hospital bed, and everything is wrong.

~

Blood had always looked wrong on her, and so he had decided early on that she simply didn’t bleed. As a man of cold, hard logic this shouldn’t make any sense, but he simply had no evidence to prove otherwise. One occasion in particular had always stuck with him, when she had insisted on scavenging in the junkyard whether he accompanied her or not (and so he did, of course). The sun was going down and while he paced the dusty wooden walkway she had insisted on balancing on the handrail, carefully placing one foot after the other, laughing infectiously with every wobble and teeter. Her balance was remarkable to be fair, although he didn’t for a second take his eyes off where she was stepping, but the fall still managed to catch him off guard; one minute her hand was in his, light and delicate against the leather of his glove, the next their distance was growing in slow motion before his eyes as her right foot slipped and she fell back away from him. He had thrown himself after her in an instant, of course, and had managed to twist them to bear the brunt of the fall, but while he had walked away from the whole event with a twisted knee and a not-insignificant wound to the head, she didn’t have a single mark on her, not even a graze. When she insisted on trying to clean the blood from his brow he had recoiled at the red on her hands, and at how it clashed with her pale skin; the colour belonged with his uniform, and not with her pink dress.

There had been so much blood at the Temple. He doesn’t remember the pain per se, the shock, if he was hot or cold, breath coming fast or slow, but he remembers more blood than he had ever seen in his life. He remembers that when she walked in, all he wanted was to beg for her to stay away - he didn’t want the last thing he ever saw to be her hands stained red for him again. Thankfully she never approached him, had turned away even, and through the haze of blood loss he had been thankful for the distance.

What that blade had done to him, it would never have done to her. She would never have bled like he did. Instead he imagined nothing but light leaving her, shining through where that cursed blade had been, and as he had bled and begun to fade so too would her light, but it never would have been so gruesome. He imagined if he had done his job, if he had been there for her, he could have closed his hands around that wound and kept that light in, kept her alive, but he supposed that much like the red that escaped between his fingers the light would have escaped too, eventually, and he would have only failed again. His hands weren’t made to hold the light, he thinks abstractly. None of him was.

There is a small glass on the windowsill, and in it is a single stem of sweet peas. 

Aerith had always told him which flowers she had been growing, what they were all called and what they had all meant, and while he couldn’t have cared less at the time it was in his nature to retain every word. He wonders what she would tell him now if she was here. Would she tell him he shouldn’t have survived, not when she hadn’t, when the same sword that spared his life cut hers so, so short? Would she have told him he’d failed, that she had always trusted him and that he’d never let her down until it really counted? Would she forgive him for not being there for her? No one else had ever forgiven him; he had never needed it.

But would she have? 

It could be the drugs coursing through his veins, but he swears he can feel her hand on his chest, tracing the wound beneath the bandages. It could be the drugs in his veins but he can see the light from where she touches filling him up, knitting the skin together, glowing brighter than his eyes can handle. It is the same light that would have escaped from her, he knows it, and it is blinding. He remembers how the black crept in from the edges of his vision, and this is the exact opposite; fading in reverse. She wouldn’t have said he shouldn’t have survived. She would never have him take her place.

“I’m not going to help,” she had said to him in the end, and she had lied to him before too. She once told him flowers never bloomed outside the church, but then he had seen her home, and learned how she would only sow light wherever she went.

~

He comes to with a jolt and the room is dark, moonlight pouring in past the open curtains. Reno is slumped asleep in the chair Rude had occupied (hours? Days?) earlier, jacket draped over him like a blanket. It is cold, he thinks distantly, realising how he must have drifted off earlier, but it is only when he looks down to the bare skin of his chest that he realises why he is feeling the temperature now.

His bandages have been removed, and where there was blinding light before there is now just flesh, knitted together like a freshly-formed scar. His body wasn’t made to hold the light, and yet here he is, pale stretch of skin across his torso made of it. He touches the edges of the wound tentatively and feels nothing. This should have taken months.

There is a small glass on the windowsill, and in it is a single stem of sweet peas. The moonlight catches on the petals, delicate and white. He is a man of cold, hard logic, but here in the dark, he smiles.

~

_“They say you can’t grow flowers in Midgar. But for some reason, they have no problem blooming here.”_

**Author's Note:**

> _Lathyrus odoritus_ , given to express gratitude, announce departure, or to say a bittersweet farewell.
> 
>   
> Huge shout out to @Maegraeth on Twitter, whose beautiful Tseng/Aerith fanart entirely inspired this.
> 
> Leave a comment, let me know what you think!


End file.
